Now I can Breathe....

I've been waiting with bated breath for the summer Knitty to come out. Back in March or April I was contacted by them to submit fiber for review for their "Fiber Fiesta" section.

I am VERY pleased to annouce that I can breathe now!!

Link is here.

Shop Update!

I had a marvelously productive dye-day last week. Just updated the shop with lots of new spinning goodies!

Dizzle's Dress

I finished the "Little Liza Jane" dress 2 days before the wedding. If any of you have little girls in your life to knit for, this dress is really a wonderful knit. I cannot tell you how many compliments I received on it throughout the wedding. I bought a sweet little button down collared shirt for her to wear with it, and had the perfect tiny heart-shaped buttons in my meager button stash for the right shoulder.

I made the 3T size for Dizzle (who is just a tad too big for most 2Ts these days, but not quite big enough for 3s to fit perfectly). I shortened the skirt by one inch, and I'm glad I did because it grew in length a bit as it was worn.

(Ravelry details)

My worries about getting it on her body were well founded. As I started to dress her to get her into her "party clothes" she started shrieking and ripping at the previously mentioned "sweet little button down collared shirt" as if she were Linda Blair's Exorcist character getting dowsed with holy water. I lied, and told her she just had to wear it "for a few minutes" and she thankfully calmed down and then promptly forgot my promise and happily trucked off to the ceremony and reception and stayed up to ungodly hours (for a 2 year old) dancing with her cousins.


And, not knitting related, but another cute photo of PumpkinBoy (who has no interest in me knitting for him, therefore rarely makes the pages here) and his cousin looking rather grownup at the wedding reception (credits for this photo and the one of Dizzle & her little cousin go to my cousin):

Whatcha Doin'

As I said in one of my last posts, my little WIP tally on the sidebar over there is totally inaccurate. I have two things on the knitting needles, only one of which is actually getting any of my time. The one I'm ignoring (in my great tradition of taking a year or more to knit one pair of socks) is a Mermaid sock in Vesper self striping, the colorway I can't be bothered to look up right now. Just went looking for a photo of it, and realized I haven't even put it in Ravelry yet. Ooops.

The other knitting WIP I have going has a deadline, so it is coming along much faster. It is the Little Liza Jane dress by Alison Green Will from the most recent Twist Collective. For what it probably the 1st time ever, I bought the exact yarn specified and even used the exact color. The dress, obviously, is for Dizzle, and the deadline is next weekend when my brother gets married.



I'm confident I will finish, as I'm already up to the bodice and even in the largest size (3T) that is not a whole lot of knitting. My problem will be actually getting Dizzle into the dress, as she has recently declared "NO DRESSES!" whenever I offer to dress her in one.

The spinning and the dyeing continue at a faster pace than my knitting, and I can't seem to be able to keep up with documenting that either. Here is a little glimpse at what has come out of the dye pots and off my bobbins lately.

Angst....and Weaving

I've been feeling some blog angst lately. With Ravelry, Flickr, Twitter, etc. it is becoming harder and harder to sit and devote the needed time to a blog post. I have lots to blog about, but it seems I come here and "crank it out" with a quick blurb about this project or that, plug in a photo an wham bam, I'm done. I used to write, rewrite, take time to take lovely blog-worthy photographs and all that, but with the instant gratification of these other tools, the blog is feeling like work to keep up. I'm not saying I don't WANT to blog, because I do, it just always gets pushed to the back burner because the other communication modes are fast and short and sweet.

(don't even get me started on how awful I feel that my sidebar is ancient - those WIPs, not WIPs anymore, the links to galleries - 2008. Ack! I can't even bear to look at it, let along take the needed time to fix and change!)

That said, today I'm going to tell you about my 2nd and 3rd weaving projects. I started off fast and furious when I first got the loom, whacking out my handspun scarf in little more than 24 hours. I immediately started a sock-yarn scarf, using some sock yarn of unknown-origin, but what I *think* came from a blog-prize I won from Margene years ago. The yarn served as warp and weft, and the end product is really lovely, but it took me forever to finish it because it got painfully boring to work on. It is another little scarf, this one with twisted fringe, which I adore the looks of.




I actually cut this off the loom with about 1foot more of length to weave because it was so boring. That and I got the idea for my next weaving project buzzing around my head that just could not be ignored.

That next project was to be a pillow, using strips of combed top for weft. I knew just the fiber I wanted to use - a wool/mohair blend from HelloYarn fiber club called "verdant". Lovely greens and browns, and the leftover fisherman's wool from my garter yoke sweater made the perfect match for warp. This was a blazing fast project - it took a grand total of like 2 hours with 45 min of that time being the blasted warping of the loom, which I am still pretty slow at.




This was an incredibly fun project and has me eyeing my fiber stash in a whole new light.

See - a real blog post, I knew I could do it! I promise to try and do more, as I have a new knitting project on the needles which makes me very happy, and I have some spinning to show you to.

Shop Update

The dyeing I did Monday is all ready! Mostly merino/bamboo - yum. But some targhee and an alpaca/merino/silk blend in there too.

Ode to Kelly

This post is for my friend Kelly (KellyR on Ravelry). She's not a blogger, but if you live in the area and spin, or knit, or use a sock machine, odds are you've met her. She's a regular at spin night and I owe her this post for two reasons.

Reason One:

She introduced me to these teeny tiny 9inch circular needles. They are HiyaHiya needles and it means I can knit socks without DPNs (hazardous around the wee ones) or magic loop (no annoying twisty dangly cord). They take a little getting used to, but I think I'm officially converted, even if they don't magically make me able to knit socks at more than a glacial pace!

Reason 2:



Wheel cup holder. Seriously, I don't think you could get any better than this. Kelly's always had this nifty plastic cup holder on her Journey Wheel at spin night. Her dearest one is in the plastics business and made it for her. Now they are making them for all of us. She has them for Schacht, Louet, Journey Wheel, Jensen, Lendrum, and after my little Rose had a sleepover at her house this weekend, she's got them for Majacraft now too. The beauty of these is that you don't have to mess with/give new holes to your wheel at all - her genius husband has figured out a custom fit for each wheel type so no wheel mods are needed. You can get yours at their Etsy shop FBNPlastics if she doesn't have your wheel, let her know - they're working on adding more to the list.